THE LAKE

Where the Styrian mountains rise
Close to Mariazell, lies
Buried in a pinewood brake
A most beautiful green lake.
Lizard's back is not so green
As its soft and tremulous sheen;
Hermit's home on Athos' hill
Cannot be a place more still.
Blissful Covert! there is not
Like that Styrian lake a spot
That I know by land or sea,
Whose unsleeping memory
Works so potently in me.
'Tis good to have a nook of earth
To be with us in our mirth,
And to set a haunt apart
To be household in the heart,
A local shrine, whence gentle sorrow

She ceased to speak, but my charmed soul
Bowed down before her soft control;
And I left the Day with her flaunting light,
To follow the calm and starry Night.

Many a cycle has there been,
With gulphs of nothingness between;
Many a time have life and birth
Revisited the aged earth:
Learn, mortal, that to me alone,
The secret things of the past are known;
Mine is every charmed rhyme,
Freighted with spells of ancient time,
Strains divinely sweet, which sing
The deeds of many a giant king,
Whose life was mighty in each limb,
Whose soul was as the seraphim;
I can place before thine eye
The mirror of eternity,
I can show thee imaged there
Shadows of all things that were,

Bring all the flowers beneath the sun,
That shut their leaves when the light is gone —
For mine is the breath of the crimson rose,
Mine is every bud that blows;
O turn from the dark dull night to me,
For mine is the beauty of earth and sea —
Thy spirit shall be clear as day,
Thy smile shall be the morning ray,
Whose light, wherever it may fall,
Sheds love and blessedness o'er all.
Thy soul shall feel the soft caress
Of unimagined happiness;
For all the roses that combine
To veil the ills of life, are mine:

Mine is the sceptre of the sky,
And mine the starry worlds on high:
Those fountains of eternal light,
Which feed the immeasurable void
With life and splendour undestroyed,
And tell that God is infinite.
Thou knowest how the midnight sky,
Fills the weak heart with purity;
How all the dreams of wrath and sin,
That lurk the soul's lone caves within,
To make its peace their prey — take flight
Before the blessed breath of night.
Thou know'st the reverential sense

I am the queen of earth and sea,
Who shall dispute the palm with me?
I am lovely as of yore,
When, upon the clouded shore
Of an abysmal sea, I stood,
Enkindled by the breath of God.
All things then, that hate the light —
All the gloomy brood of night,
Fled before me, as I blest
The raging deep with peace, and rest.
Then — the proud giant of the sun,
Leapt forth his glorious race to run,
And the breathing world her course begun:
How beautiful it was, to see
Beneath my beams, all things that be
Awake in primal revelry;

They met in the hour of the dim twilight,
The hour, that is neither day, nor night;
Like two proud queens, they met on high,
In that neutral space of the summer sky,
Where the evening star, when the day is done,
Shines through the haze of the sunken sun.
The first was darkly pale — with eyes
Deeper than are the midnight skies,
Pale, as an Indian monarch's bride,
The burning pyre beside;
Yet lovely, as the seraphim,
When pitying tears their splendour dim,
Tears shed in heaven itself, to see
The depth of human misery:

I.

The W AKING OF THE S EA .

" A LL that is beautiful shall abide,
All that is base shall die."
Hark! birds are singing far and wide,
Under the summer sky. . . .

Southward across the shining Bow
The blessed Brethren came;
They wore soft raiment of the snow
And sandals shod with flame.

And golden lights and rippling rains
Were on the frozen sea,

I.

" Balder ! Balder!"

And Palder said,
Turning round his gentle head,
" I hear!"

" And thou, my servant Death,
Kneeling low with hushid breath,
While my hand is on thy hair!"

Death made answer, kneeling there,
" I hear!"

" At last the cold snows cease,
The white world is hush'd in peace,
The sky is clear, the storm has gone,
Stars are rising to light us on —
In the north the moon grows gray, —
Take my hand and come away!"

I.

How long he lay in that strange trance of night
Might Balder never know;
Silently fell the waifs of stainless white,
And deeper grew the snow.

While out of heaven the falling flakes were shed,
The dark hours grew to days;
And round and round a red moon overhead
Went circling without rays.

There were no stars, only that cheerless thing
Treading the wintry round;
There was no light, save snow-flowers glimmering
Without a sound.

Darkness of doom is shed on Balder's eyes,
But whiteness shrouds the wold;